War in the air: On 20th August 1936, over Portland in Dorset, ‘in the
evening an airship hove into sight on the horizon. It was the Hindenburg or the Graf Zeppelin’. Decades later I learnt from a footnote in a
German article that such a visit could well have been for
reconnaissance of British harbours. In fact, in August 1939, a fortnight before the declaration of war, we witnessed battleships, destroyers and air craft carriers massed in Portland Harbour and Weymouth Bay for the King’s Review.
Plane recognition was important. Among those I identi- fied were Whitleys at Shippon ‘aerodrome’; a downed Wellington in
a field in the Cotswolds; a Hurricane on show at an RAF display of engines and aeroplane parts at Woodstock; a Boston at Wytham, ‘three
secret planes - I identified them all properly’
over Oxford; a Harvard over the University Parks; and 18 Lightnings over Thrupp. I
‘wrote a poem about aeroplanes to send to the Aeroplane Spotter. We heard ‘bombers setting off for Germany’ and ‘aeroplanes going over, but not many bombs, so we concluded the raid must have been over Liverpool or Coventry’ (July
1942). The only German planes I saw were smashed-up (‘kaputtes Flugzeug’, said Marianne) on low loaders passing through Oxford bound for Cowley. We saw bomb damage at Worcester and Bristol:
‘barrage balloons quite low. Bomb damage very bad. We asked a man the way and he said “Go down Castle Street, what’s left of it”. There was not much left of it, and what was not knocked down was burnt out. St Mary Redcliffe had not been damaged’. (Aug 1941) We children
made an ‘aeroplane of boxes and iron bars, my cousin as pilot and
cannon on the starboard wing, and me in the tail turret and operating the bomb release. We bombed Berlin, shot down several enemy planes and made a successful landing by parachute’. (Aug 1942). We bought
model kits for a Spitfire and a Hurricane, at one shilling. During WWII my husband-to-be, after training at Pensacola, Florida, was piloting Catalinas looking for U-boats in the Atlantic, based in Northern Ireland.
Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bomber
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The War Effort - Dig for Victory: By April 1941 we had one of the
allotments created in the University Parks. My brother and I had our own small sections, which we tended carefully. Things were on a larger scale at the farm in Hartlebury. The Park at Hartlebury Castle (residence of the Bishop of Worcester) was ploughed up and sown with oats. ‘Nearly
all the trees have got to be pulled down’
(April 1941). The oats were harvested that August amid the sawn-up trees. Sheep and hens were kept there. In August 1942 we helped on the farm: the back-breaking job of picking potatoes after the tractor- drawn digger (it had been horse-drawn the previous year) and receiving 2d each; hay-making (mostly clover); stooking oats with six sheaves at the proper angle to the wind; picking the plums and
Worcester Pearmain apples; picking peas and collecting the remaining ‘haulm’ with the gypsies and casual labour from Droitwich - for one sack of peas of the required weight one received a ‘cheque’ (metal token), redeemable at the farm office window for 1/6d.
We were able to glean (for free) from the Castle grounds, 14 lbs on one day and 12 lbs on another, to feed our hens in Oxford. They travelled to Dorset with us in a trailer, and much enjoyed the holiday. We also kept rabbits: a frisky Flemish/English buck and a breeding doe who produced several litters of twelve. We did not eat them ourselves, but sold them. Much time was spent collecting food for them, mostly dandelions, by bicycle. Another enterprise (though we didn’t
participate) was to collect food-waste for a communal pig, shared when slaughtered.
Our food waste, mostly potato peelings, went into a solid old saucepan, brought to the boil and placed in a hay-box (tea chest) in the kitchen) until soft enough to feed to the hens. The smell was very unpleasant. At school a Bee Club was formed: ‘I filled in my Share
Book. I got ½ lb of honey’. A Communal Restaurant opened in Park
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Food: The food supply gradually worsened. On 8th April 1942, ‘white
and brown bread are now banned, and we have to eat National Wholemeal Bread’ (a
greyish off-white). Bread and cakes were still on ration (two slices a day) when I was up at Cambridge from 1944-48. Snoek and dried egg were not very palatable. On 31st
August 1942: ‘Mum trying to buy some
Spam’. Tinned goods were on points (apart
from the usual rations): 26th April 1942 -
‘Tinned salmon - yum yum!’. A Lyons ice-
cream block which we had for tea ‘was
made of oatmeal flour and water, frozen’. By August 1942 we heard
that ice-creams ‘are going to be BANNED in September!’, and ration cards for sweets were issued: red for children, blue for adults. ‘Bought
8 oz of sweets - a fortnight’s rations’. To make up for the lack of
imported sugar, sugar beet was grown on the farm and delivered by lorry to a huge concrete-lined pit.
In September 1943 we holidayed in the Lakes, taking our bicycles on the train to Windermere and cycling with heavy knapsacks through pouring rain up to Great Langdale. For the next fortnight we went out exploring in the rain. On the only fine day we scaled Scafell Pike, and on our return learnt that Italy had surrendered unconditionally. Travelling back to Oxford, ‘Dad ate a mouldy piece of cheese left over
from a fortnight ago’, and ‘we were terribly hungry’. This was as
nothing to the hunger that I and three other Girtonians experienced on a trip to Greece in Spring 1948. In England, rationing was still in force (even potatoes at one point), and a tin of frankfurters, shared for four ‘meals’ between us, supplemented the black bread, cottage cheese, olives, lemons and yoghurt available in Greece since the Nazi
occupation. This is why I am disgusted at today’s ‘world of competitive eating - 3,000 calories a minute’, the huge waste of food, and the use of eggs as missiles.
Efforts were made to nourish young people. There was milk at break-time at school. Later we were issued with NAMCO (National Milk Cocoa), a powder which one mixed with hot water for a bedtime drink. Margaret Pinsent